Tag: international human rights treaties

On October 14, the U.S. and Cuba met in Havana for another discussion of human rights.[1]

According to Cuba’s Deputy Director General for Multilateral Affairs and International Law, Pedro Luis Pedroso Cuesta, Cuba “defended the universality, indivisibility and interdependence of all human rights,” including social and cultural rights. Cuba also emphasized “the need to develop this exchange with full respect for the sovereign equality, independence and non-interference in the internal affairs of the parties.”

He also said Cuba had demonstrated its commitment to the protection of human rights by ratifying 44 of the 61 international human rights treaties instruments whereas the U.S. had ratified only 18 of these instruments.

He then delivered the following indictment of the U.S. record on human rights:

Most significantly, he alleged, the U.S. “economic, commercial and financial blockade . . . constitutes a flagrant, massive and systematic violation of their human rights.”

Moreover, “the U.S. has documented violations of the right to life in deaths by firearms and police brutality and abuse, particularly against African Americans.”

The U.S. also has a “pay gap between men and women, discrimination against migrants and other minorities, low level of unionization of workers and restrictions on unions, lack of access to social security, health services and education of many Americans, child labor and the growing and serious manifestations of racism and racial discrimination.”

The U.S. also committed “human rights violations elsewhere in the world, especially in the context of its so-called fight against terrorism: acts of torture committed in detention centers and secret prisons and extrajudicial executions, including civilian deaths resulting from the use of drones. He criticized in particular the permanence of the detention center in the illegally occupied territory of Guantanamo Bay and the torture and serious violations committed there.”

“The [Cuban] delegation drew attention to double standards and selectivity that prevails in the consideration of human rights issues at the international level as well as the importance of the right to development, peace and others who are essential to the full exercise of human rights, respect for which is known complicit silence prevails in the mainstream media.”

The only U.S. State Department comment on this round of discussions found by this blogger was an announcement of the members of the U.S. delegation.[2]

The prior round of such discussions took place in Washington, D.C. in March 2015.